The Sport Thread

[Rdd]

I think they’re around almost as long as the Six Nations ones (2014 apparently)! But they’ve aged very well.

[Brekkie]

I see the Virtual Grand National is still a thing and gets an hour long slot in the build up to the real event next week at 1pm.

Also with the Women's Six Nations in full swing see Amazon Prime have a documentary about the women's game now available. No idea if it's any good but it should get something for it's name - "No Woman No Try".

[thebigdog2020]

After the debate last week about the Ireland v Wales Women's Rugby Anthems BBC NI showed them today however looking back at the iplayer and they missed them all last week which shows to me it was an error from BBC NI and just missed them rather than a political point.

[OboeShoes]

The France Top 14 though have some simple but therefore nice graphics still - and they've added a conversion clock too from the point the try is scored. At some point in recent years the time allowed to take the conversion has increased to 90 seconds, as every Welshman found out a couple of weeks back.

Off-topic comment as a ref: It sounds like it's longer, but in effect it's not. There was nothing written in the laws to force a team to stop timewasting after a try but before the kicker lined up the ball. The 90 seconds goes from the moment the try is awarded.

[RhysJR]

Think the URC graphics from South Africa often have a conversion clock too.


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The BBC One Boat Race coverage naturally features a semi-transparent hashtag in the corner of the screen, though somehow it's not in Reith.

[Rdd]

With the Top 14 it’s not just a conversion clock - it’s used on penalty kicks too.

The URC one is just used for conversions, and I think only RTE and SuperSport use it.

[KPaKelpie39]

Top 14 used the clock for kicks for years.

[RhysJR]

Am I right in saying Sky Sports Golf is not rebranding to Sky Sports Masters this week? Can't see any suggestion of a change on the schedule or elsewhere.


Meanwhile, Sly Sports are hyping up their blockbuster coverage on Sunday:
https://twitter.com/SkySports/status/151...C05AVmwJ2A

[RhysJR]

The Times reporting that the ECB and Sky are close to agrreeing a bumper new contract until 2034. Think this will suit all parties (ECB, Sky and the BBC) quite well.

https://twitter.com/TimesSport/status/15...C05AVmwJ2A

[Worzel]

Have to say I've been really disappointed by the overall standard of Eurosport's coverage of the WDF darts from the Lakeside.

Several failures in transmission with picture breakups since Sunday, including the whole broadcast falling off air tonight and cutting to a fault caption for about 10 minutes. This evening's been the worst whereby a microphone was left live over the caption with a director saying that the sat truck was dead and god knows what they were going to do. They've had to have 2 breaks in play as the technical problems continued and they seem to have just given up with a locked off camera from the back now.

The graphics seem to get stuck a lot as well, wrong check out scores being shown and the directors seem a bit slow at cutting to certain shots, almost missing important check outs. At one stage yesterday the white balance was so off on the camera focussed on the board it was like peering through fog to see it. It took them almost half way through a match to fix it.

Edit. Looks like they've abandoned the live coverage altogether as of 22:52.

[fusionlad]

https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphy180/statu...opc5A&s=19

[Worzel]

https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphy180/statu...opc5A&s=19

They ended up abandoning the coverage towards the end of the Jules van Dongen and Ryan de Vreede match.

Tonight's final match between Wayne Warren and Lee Shewan has had to be rescheduled for tomorrow night instead.

[Brekkie]

The Times reporting that the ECB and Sky are close to agrreeing a bumper new contract until 2034. Think this will suit all parties (ECB, Sky and the BBC) quite well.

Suits those three parties well. Whether it suits cricket really is questionable - thought there was a slow realisation how damaging locking out free to air live coverage had been in recent years, especially with the 5-0 whitewash over the winter. The County Game could certainly be better covered, though they are slowly but surely doing their own thing streaming wise.

Rare too for such a lengthy deal - common in the US of course, but rare to get a deal over 4 years for sports events here.

[bkman1990]

I think some of the music suite used for the UEFA CL game between Benfica & Liverpool on RTÉ2 was out of sync in some places tonight. I think the tempo from other parts of the theme music were sped up a little bit during some parts of their studio coverage.

[Newshound47]

The Times reporting that the ECB and Sky are close to agrreeing a bumper new contract until 2034. Think this will suit all parties (ECB, Sky and the BBC) quite well.

Suits those three parties well. Whether it suits cricket really is questionable - thought there was a slow realisation how damaging locking out free to air live coverage had been in recent years, especially with the 5-0 whitewash over the winter. The County Game could certainly be better covered, though they are slowly but surely doing their own thing streaming wise.

Rare too for such a lengthy deal - common in the US of course, but rare to get a deal over 4 years for sports events here.

Those questions will only grow more and more over the coming decade.